Random Thought

Going on the basis of everything a movement conservative accuses their opponent of doing is actually something they're doing on a far worse scale, is it possible that conservatives actually are communists?
Maybe some rogue element of the Soviet empire moved to Wall Street after the Iron Curtain fell.
Yeah, probably not, but at this point I wouldn't be that shocked.
And no, I'm not high right now.

Rhetorical Question

are all fundamentalist Christians repressed homosexuals?
(Oops, oops, oops. I forgot Christwire is satire. Doy.)

The funny, it burns;

Only weeks ago, we looked into a dangerous new trend where school girls were taking pictures of themselves in Batman panties and sharing them with millions of strangers on Facebook.

Was there a comic book writer’s nerdy scheme behind the uncouth antics? Or was it a deeper cultural impact these fetishized fantasy characters are having upon America’s youth?

Reviewing the tale of Batman, we found a story that fit the model of exploitation and degradation. As reviewed, Batman is the story of a middle-aged man who fancies forcing a boy to wear tight see-through stocking.

The Batman is a character who represents child exploitation and gay adoption. Taut muscles bounding as they spend the night being thrashed and bound by criminals, only to overcome impossible adversary through neatly placed gadgets and groping one another, Batman and the young, supple Robin return to their ‘batcave’ where they have wounds nursed by a male butler named Alfred.

Btw, there is nothing comparable here to the story of Christ, who spent all his time in the company of 12 other men and died a violent, bloody death which the re-enactment of causes fundies to experience an ecstasy so intense they weep. Nothing phallic or homoerotic about being poked with a spear, neither, so shush.
(Apologies to any sane Christians who chance by.)

Question

since a (very small) number of you are being kind enough to stop by here, imma ask for a little feedback. What, if anything, would you like me to write about? Should I give Megan a visit, rant about the follies of drug policy, try to explain why I love Radiohead so much, spend several thousand words wandering through what I see as the cultural/philosophical underpinnings of the left and right today and why I so strongly choose one side?
Or I could just keep being random and see where it takes me, anything is an option.

Well, I'll keep being random, too, no matter what. To thine own self be true, etcetc.

Cat Porn

cuz Binkley is still one beautiful ball of fuzzy love.

Lap cat;


Under the bed cat;


I can't really take a pic of his current cutest activity, which is curling up in a ball next to my shoulder under the covers and providing me with a warm pillow. That'll end come spring, tho.

Irony And/Or Hypocrisy

Part 1;

Part 2;

'Nuff said.
Or maybe not. Just in case you don't know who he is, scan his twitter feed a little, you'll get the idea.

Mhm

Technically he's talking about the Tories in the UK, but the point holds. Stanley Donwood is a talented artist, even aside from his association with my favorite band of my lifetime.

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Also Worth Highlighting

John Cole is so very, very shrill;

The fundamental thing you need to understand when talking to deficit hawks is that when they say something is painful or that cuts will hurt people, you need to recognize that what they really mean is that the cuts will be painful TO SOMEONE ELSE and hurt people THEY DON’T KNOW AND WILL NEVER MEET. That’s why it’s so easy to be a condescending asshole about the budget. That’s why it takes nothing to suggest raising the retirement age for Social Security. That’s why, after taking a month off from writing on the internet to recover from a cold, he can tell people who work back-breaking manual labor every day of their god damned lives for much less money than he or McMegan earn that they should “contribute” more to their health care costs.

A-fucking-men.
("He" = Andrew Sullivan, who'sgoodontortureblahfuckingblah but also a Bell Curve defender aka polite racist. Plus he wants poor people to die so his tiny, vestigial conscience isn't pricked by them. And there's the whole anti-war protesters were a third column line which he pretended to apologize for.)

Radioheaaaaaaaaaaaad

Me happy.
(And yes, I realize that vid doesn't fit. Don't care.)

Worth Highlighting

Thers is fucking smart.

I suppose a more basic point would be that if your favorite ideology is threatened by someone else's freedom, your favorite ideology sucks.

If only he didn't have such a filthy fucking mouth, maybe he'd be a serious thinker.

An Unnecessary (And Untimely) Rant

which may well be offensive to one or two of the three or four who eventually read it, but I feel a need to vent.

The response of some of the more dedicated feminist elements of the American left to the Julian Assange rape case truly bothers me. Rape is bad, duh, and if any elements of the accusations against Assange are true he's a misogynist asshole who deserves no pity. If the worst is true, he is a rapist, full stop, and deserves to be punished for it. However, the horrendous nature of rape does not excuse us from approaching this case rationally. If anything, the emotions involved demand we be even more careful, as it is too easy for pre-rational bias to blind us to the nature of this individual case. And, to me, part of being a lefty is a belief in the necessity and value of the phrase "innocent until proven guilty", even if it may not have full legal weight in this particular instance, as I am not familiar with Swedish law.

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't want to try to pass my own judgment on his guilt or innocence. The details are murky, depending on whose reporting you read and trust, and there appears to be misinformation on both sides regarding the specific Swedish laws regarding the kind of rape(s) of which Assange is accused. Instead what I want to look at is how the case has been received by, in my opinion, too many feminists on my side of the Atlantic. The charge of rape seems to wipe away the hope of a rational response from many, which is not me saying "crazy bitches", but rather that we all have buttons which can be pushed which cause us to be less than our best selves. For many on the right that button is Islamic terrorism, and if someone is accused of being a terrorist the burden of proof is shifted to the accused to show their innocence, if there even remains the possibility of doing so. For me, the whiff of eliminationist violence can lead me to assign blame somewhat presumptively. Unfortunately, for some feminists the accusation of rape has a comparable effect. The opening argument of this post at a blog which I otherwise am unfamiliar with and recognize is not about or for me, is, unfortunately, a good example.

There can be no disputing the facts cited there regarding how rape in America is treated by our legal system, although their relevance to a case in Sweden is debatable, but their aggregate truth does not create a presumption of guilt in the individual case. I went to boarding school, and my loathing of the kind of prep jock asshole who plays lacrosse is second only to those women who genuinely have suffered at their hands, but the fact remains that the Duke LAX team was not guilty of the particular charges levied against them, and any black man accused of raping a white woman, particularly in a southern state in the previous century or earlier, likely has limited hope for a fair trial. That's not to deny that Assange is an asshole who likely treats women badly, and that he is the type of man who may well be capable of the acts he is accused of, but his being a dick doesn't mean he used his as a weapon.

What's lost in focusing on the horrid nature of rape in this case is any recognition of the particulars of the case. And these particulars should give any thinking person serious pause. The first prosecutor in the case declined to press charges, the investigation was only resumed after Wikileaks once again embarrassed and angered powerful interests, and for Interpol to issue an international warrant leading to the incarceration and isolation of a suspect based on the prosecutor's desire to interview him a second time, an interview the suspect expressed willingness to submit to freely, is, to my knowledge and opinion, unprecedented and highly disproportionate to the circumstances. The only way to ignore this context is to believe either that Assange deserves whatever he gets because of the acts of Wikileaks, or because, as seems to be the argument in the blog post I cited earlier, to be accused of rape means you probably did it, and thus, again, deserve whatever you get. I'm not presuming cause and effect, there may well be legitimate reasons why the second prosecutor resumed the investigation, and perhaps Assange's reputation as a shadowy figure who keeps in motion across the globe to make it hard to pinpoint his location justifies the extreme nature of his treatment, but considering the context and his expressed willingness to cooperate with the investigation to prove one or both of those is a high bar to reach.

To say again, because it's worth highlighting, none of this is to defend Assange as a person or deny the seriousness of what he's accused of. I'm not standing with Michael Moore and calling this a baseless witch hunt. Perhaps the best comparison I can think of is the classic case of the ACLU defending the American Nazi Party's right to march in Skokie. To extend your values even to those who you find odious is to show your true commitment to them. Were Assange a doctor accused of performing abortions in a nation where it's illegal to do so many of those preemptively standing against him would be championing his cause. If you let the nature of the charged crime determine your response I have to question your commitment to justice, and it saddens me that many who I fundamentally agree with would let the accusation outweigh any other considerations.

And I don't mean to create any straw-women and say all feminists are being irrational, I'm not saying this out of some underlying desire to discredit feminism as a cause, quite the opposite. I cherish the values feminism champions, and want it to succeed. I'm ranting because I think it does the cause a disservice when some, and by no means all, let passion overwhelm their reason. (And to say again, that's not a coded assault on women, but a recognition of a universal human flaw.) To me, feminism is a part of humanism, a valuing of all humans equally, and believing we all deserve equal rights and opportunity, even assholes, provided they don't harm others. In closing I'd like to point to this piece by a foundational Swedish feminist, pointing out some of the many problems in the Assange case, shared with me by a female Swedish friend. (Apologies for the clunky Google translation, but the gist remains clear.) This is not Naomi Wolf glibly speaking of the "rape police", but someone who knows Sweden and its laws, and who finds real flaws in the case. Rape is a poorly treated and largely unhealed wound in human society, but that does not excuse a lack of reason and rationality in response. If anything it demands the opposite, lest we let the wound fester. I know it is... impolite to mention, but the Duke case gave rape apologists ammunition, and shows, to me, the need to always keep justice as the first goal in response to any crime, even the worst.

And that's my first real post here, wow.

Yes

Please.

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